‘Romanovs are role models’: Kremlin hosts conference marking royal family martyrdom anniversary
The faith, resilience and patriotism of the Romanovs offers an example to all modern Russians, participants were told at a conference in Moscow, held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the killing of Russia’s royal family.
The descendants of Russia’s last emperor, officials from Moscow and other regions of Russia, Orthodox clerics and historians came to the State Kremlin Palace on Thursday for the annual readings, dedicated to Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and other members of the Russian royal family, who were executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
The murder of the Romanovs “is a sad event for us but, actually, it evokes a lot of things – the deeds that those people achieved; about how firm their faith was and about how bravely they acted in any circumstances, and preserved their Christian faith,” the Tver and Kashin Metropolitan Savva told the gathering.
The royal family are “a role model for us all. We all should love our Fatherland, maintain and strengthen our faith” like they did, the Metropolitan urged, adding that more general knowledge of the royal martyrs should be expanded and promoted among the population.
Olga Kulikovskaya-Romanova, the widow of Nicholas II’s nephew, stressed that the place in history of Grand Duchess Elizabeth “fully deserves” the attention that it’s now receiving.
“She’s done a lot for history. She’s done a lot for Russia,” Kulikovskaya-Romanova said. The Grand Duchess was the sister of the Empress and the wife of Moscow governor Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, engaging in a lot of charity work and largely contributing to the changing look of the city. After her husband was killed by a terrorist bomb in 1905, she opened the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary and became a nun.
Moscow government minister Vladimir Chernikov said that the charity work, which is currently being carried out under the banner of Elizabeth Feodorovna, not only helps many people but also improves the atmosphere in the capital.
The Grand Duchess refused to leave Russia after the 1917 Revolution, was detained and later murdered along with 17 members of the Romanov family.
The last Russian Emperor, his wife and five children were killed by a group of Bolsheviks on the night of 16–17 July, 1918 outside the city of Yekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains. Elizabeth Feodorovna met her end not far from the nearby town of Alpayevsk the next day. She was thrown into an abandoned mine together with several other bearers of the Romanov name.
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Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna was declared a martyr and saint by the Russian Orthodox Church back in 1992, eight years before the canonization of Nicholas II and his family.
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